‘I want to be a millionaire’

No longer a dream but a possibility, today’s youth aspire to be rich, become a millionaire by the age of 35, and are confident that they can attain their ambition. 

WITH role models like Mark Zuckerberg, 26, founder of Facebook and youngest self-made businessman worth more than a billion dollars; and Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders of Google, it is no wonder that the young think they can hit the jackpot too. The lure of being young and successful is strong – with icons that made their millions barely out of university.

In today’s world of success equals wealth, many see their paper qualification as a mere stepping stone to routes that will bring them an income beyond a simple salary.

To aspire to be a millionaire is no longer an abstract phrase but a very doable achievement. Obviously, 96% of 1,678 youth up to the age of 30 surveyed in the “So You Want to be a Millionaire” poll think so too.
The poll run by Sunday Star with YouthSays and Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman found that most youth indicated that they aspire to become millionaires.

Rajen Devadason, a Securities Commission-licensed financial planner with MAAKL Mutual Bhd, attributes the rise to the existence of successful role models like Bill Gates in the United States, Richard Branson in Britain and Datuk Seri Tony Fernandes here in Malaysia.

Role models: The success of Google founders Page (left) and Brin has spurred the young to think that they too can hit the jackpot.

 

“They are all exciting beacons of possibility for a generation looking for ‘heroes’ to emulate,” says Rajen.
“The appalling lack of political calibre we see everywhere, both in Malaysia and internationally, and the flaky behaviour of some entertainers and sports personalities, have caused today’s young people to increasingly choose to look toward business icons as role models. Financial success is, naturally enough, tied to high achievement in that arena,” he adds.

Joel Neoh, the executive-director of YouthSays, is surprised that almost everyone who took the poll aspires to be a milionaire.

“What is interesting is how many would eventually become one. Many won’t be able to achieve the goal,” he opines.

He is not too sure if the term “millionaire” means having RM1mil in cash or collective assets or a combination of both.

“If it’s collective assets, it’s very possible to achieve it today. About 10 to 15 years of savings can amass to that amount (car, house, etc). However, if it is RM1mil cash, this is quite a challenge to do so before the age of 35 if one is a salaried worker. But if one is running a business, then the chances are higher,” he says.

Neoh believes there is a rise in the number of young adults working towards such a goal and attributes it to how materialistic society has become.

“Materialism is a big part of our society. Many of our parents tell us to get a good degree and good job. For many, being successful means being rich,” he says.

CEO of youth agency Summer Sands, Bernard Hor, shares that there is an increasing market for “how to get rich” courses, citing the many wealth academies and programmes available for those who want to learn how to make money.

“Many of those who go for such programmes are college students,” says Hor.

He adds that the multi-level-marketing (MLM) concept has the most active penetration in the campuses. He claims that research indicates that at least nine out of 10 students are exposed to what MLM has to offer. Hor says that six or seven students join MLM in one way or another.

“They have been sold the idea of making their millions through such marketing,” says Hor, adding that many of them aim to reach their goal before turning 30.

In fact, almost 75% of respondents agreed that being a millionaire was the single-most important thing in their life.
So what is the motivation for becoming a millionaire?
For ATCEN Founder and Group CEO Ernie Chen, being a millionaire is just sexy.

“Why wouldn’t you want to be one? Every kid I’ve met wants to have the cars and houses. They get the idea from TV shows and movies – pop culture, basically. The founders of Google were only in their 20s when they became not just millionaires, but billionaires,” says Chen who runs the Millionaire Business School.

But it is more than just being rich for glamour’s sake; saving for retirement is an important consideration too, especially with the increasing cost of living and inflation.

Loo Chuan Boon, Youth for Change (Y4C) convener, believes that the word millionaire is just a metaphor for making more money.

“There is an assumption that the price of everything will go up and there is a need to make a lot of money to survive, ” he says, adding that many youth are starting to invest in unit trust and other funds.

Alvin Chia, 21, a third-year business student, aspires to be a millionaire by 30. He cites lifestyle needs as a reason to make his millions.

Neoh: ‘Materialism is a big part of our society’.

 

“We know that in order to maintain the lifestyles we’re accustomed to, we need more than just a basic job to get that million ringgit. My priority in terms of a career right now would be a first job that would broaden my horizons. I’m going to try to earn as much money as I can once I’m done with studying,” he says.

Rajen says that most Malaysians now in their 30s and 40s who hope to retire between the ages of 55 and 65 are likely to need between RM500,000 and RM5 mil, depending on their lifestyles.

“The snowballing effects of inflation will almost certainly kick in well before we retire, thus necessitating millionaire status simply to afford simple amenities in the 2040 to 2050 time period,” he says.

He believes the growing ambitions of today’s youth are also indicative of higher expectations they are willing to place on themselves.

“All this suggests that more young people are willing to pay the high price, in terms of discipline, diligence and courage, to break the bounds of conventional employment and build businesses or professional practices that will grant them their lofty desired economic outcomes,” he adds.

But while almost everyone wants to become a millionaire, not everyone will succeed in doing so.

“I’ve met young people who have huge aspirations. The reality is that some will make it, some will not. If everyone does well, the economy will get better, our country will do better,” says Chen.

Hor: ‘Increasing market for courses on how to get rich’

 

He travels all over the country looking to recruit students for his “millionaire school”. He thinks that students are very lost because of the numerous options before them.

Spoilt for choice

“We didn’t have very many choices growing up. Now you can be anything you want. There are a lot of ‘professional dreamers’, as I like to call them, out there but they don’t take any serious action towards realising their dreams,” says Chen.

He adds that becoming a millionaire, billionaire, or achieving financial success involves a lot of hard work. And therein lies the problem.

Only 36% of those surveyed believe that hard work is essential to reaching their goal. However, 47% believe that becoming a millionaire is based on opportunities – being at the right place at the right time.

“Young people don’t understand what hard work is,” says Chen.

Similarly, Rajen believes that most youth who talk about setting such high economic goals are unlikely to follow through with the appropriate actions.

But for those who do, they are the top performers in professions like law, medicine, engineering, accountancy and financial planning; players in the oil and gas sector; successful sales professionals of financial products, including life insurance and unit trusts; and persistent entrepreneurs who are willing to face the 1-in-10 chance of having a new business succeed.

Working for someone is viewed as unlikely to help you reach your goal and this is probably the reason why almost 60% of the respondents ticked owning their own businesses and entrepreneurship as the way to achieve their target.

“The heavy emphasis on business and entrepreneurship is correct. That is the way to wealth, at least in terms of earning big bucks,” opines Rajen.

He adds that the entrepreneurs are the ones who have already learnt to be respectful and considerate employees.

“Working initially as a conventional employee for at least three years is, in my opinion, a vital step in the maturation process of becoming a great employer or business owner,” he says.

Neoh says the entrepreneurial route has been proven to work. Their yearly National Youth Entrepreneur Conference has resulted in a few successful startups.

“The Government and businesses have realised this, and are coming up with special with grants and funds for young people to start a business,” he says.

Hor believes the entrepreneurial route requires a lot of patience. He lists his own experience as painful. Many entrepreneurs who have made it big talk about the time when they had only roti canai or Maggi Mee to eat for a long time. He himself had to contend with red beans and bread for almost 10 months.

The need to support one’s family can be a big obstacle in venturing out and taking risks.

“Many want to be bosses and own their own businesses, but after university, they have to send money home. Entrepreneurs don’t get a salary for nine to 18 months. They have no choice but to opt out of the dream and take up a regular job,” says Hor.

Chen, however, says that there are many ways of achieving financial success. “You can be a millionaire even if you are an employee. The key is having businesses on the side and investments,” he says.
 
Source: RASHVINJEET S.BEDI and SUMISHA NAIDU sunday@thestar.com.my

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The End of an Era in Finance

CAMBRIDGE – In the world of economics and finance, revolutions occur rarely and are often detected only in hindsight. But what happened on February 19 can safely be called the end of an era in global finance.

On that day, the International Monetary Fund published a policy note that reversed its long-held position on capital controls. Taxes and other restrictions on capital inflows, the IMF’s economists wrote, can be helpful, and they constitute a “legitimate part” of policymakers’ toolkit.

Rediscovering the common sense that had strangely eluded the Fund for two decades, the report noted: “logic suggests that appropriately designed controls on capital inflows could usefully complement” other policies. As late as November of last year, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn had thrown cold water on Brazil’s efforts to stem inflows of speculative “hot money,” and said that he would not recommend such controls “as a standard prescription.”

So February’s policy note is a stunning reversal – as close as an institution can come to recanting without saying, “Sorry, we messed up.” But it parallels a general shift in economists’ opinion. It is telling, for example, that Simon Johnson, the IMF’s chief economist during 2007-2008, has turned into one of the most ardent supporters of strict controls on domestic and international finance.

The IMF’s policy note makes clear that controls on cross-border financial flows can be not only desirable, but also effective. This is important, because the traditional argument of last resort against capital controls has been that they could not be made to stick. Financial markets would always outsmart the policymakers.

Even if true, evading the controls requires incurring additional costs to move funds in and out of a country – which is precisely what the controls aim to achieve. Otherwise, why would investors and speculators cry bloody murder whenever capital controls are mentioned as a possibility? If they really couldn’t care less, then they shouldn’t care at all.

One justification for capital controls is to prevent inflows of hot money from boosting the value of the home currency excessively, thereby undermining competitiveness. Another is to reduce vulnerability to sudden changes in financial-market sentiment, which can wreak havoc with domestic growth and employment. To its credit, the IMF not only acknowledges this, but it also provides evidence that developing countries with capital controls were hit less badly by the fallout from the sub-prime mortgage meltdown.

The IMF’s change of heart is important, but it needs to be followed by further action. We currently don’t know much about designing capital-control regimes. The taboo that has attached to capital controls has discouraged practical, policy-oriented work that would help governments to manage capital flows directly. There is some empirical research on the consequences of capital controls in countries such as Chile, Colombia, and Malaysia, but very little systematic research on the appropriate menu of options. The IMF can help to fill the gap.

Emerging markets have resorted to a variety of instruments to limit private-sector borrowing abroad: taxes, unremunerated reserve requirements, quantitative restrictions, and verbal persuasion. In view of the sophisticated nature of financial markets, the devil is often in the details – and what works in one setting is unlikely to work well in others.

For example, Taiwan’s use of administrative measures that rely heavily on close monitoring of flows may be inappropriate in settings where bureaucratic capacity is more limited. Similarly, Chilean-style unremunerated reserve requirements may be easier to evade in countries with extensive trading in sophisticated derivatives.
With the stigma on capital controls gone, the IMF should now get to work on developing guidelines on what kind of controls work best and under what circumstances. The IMF provides countries with technical assistance in a wide range of areas: monetary policy, bank regulation, and fiscal consolidation. It is time to add managing the capital account to this list.

With this battle won, the next worthy goal is a global financial transaction tax. Set at a very low level – 0.05% is a commonly mentioned rate – such a tax would raise hundreds of billions of dollars for global public goods while discouraging short-term speculative activities in financial markets.

Support for a global financial-transaction tax is growing. A group of NGOs have rechristened it the “Robin Hood tax,” and have launched a global campaign to promote it, complete with a deliciously biting video clip featuring British actor Bill Nighy (www.robinhoodtax.org). Significantly, the European Union has thrown its weight behind the tax and urged the IMF to pursue it. The only major holdout is the United States, where Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has made his distaste for the proposal clear.

What made finance so lethal in the past was the combination of economists’ ideas with the political power of banks. The bad news is that big banks retain significant political power. The good news is that the intellectual climate has shifted decisively against them. Shorn of support from economists, the financial industry will have a much harder time preventing the fetish of free finance from being tossed into the dustbin of history.

By Dani Rodrik, Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, is the first recipient of the Social Science Research Council’s Albert O. Hirschman Prize. His latest book is One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
www.project-syndicate.org

COMMENTS : Nico 06:56 11 Mar 10

The state has not only kept the structures in place, but has given the banks unlimited access to not only the taxpayers, but the money supply. These banks now, due to the mergers and acquisitions of weaker banks, are even more powerful economically and politically. Lastly, there hasn't been any serious attempt at reform yet, and its has been over a year since the crisis began. It is becoming increasingly obvious that private ownership of finance is doomed to reach these proportions of instability, because of Minsky argues, stability leads to instability and it also leads to agents who have lots of money and have disproportionate political influence, because of much lower costs associated with 'rent-seeking'. In addition, the ability of capital to aggregate has no end leads to the subsumption of democracy under the tyranny of the market. We are all seeing this happen, but does anyone really have an answer to this crisis, an answer that would not just recreate the conditions in teh future, without some radical change? I don't think its possible, but I could be convinced otherwise.
http://perspectivos.blogspot.com/

The MBA – is it still relevant?

I WAS in Manila for a gathering of governors and trustees of the Asian Institute of Management. Among them were the cream of the Makati business community, and a cross-section of entrepreneurs and scholars from India to Korea and Japan, as well as from the United States, Britain and Australia.

Supported by the Harvard Business School (HBS), the institute was founded 42 years ago. It’s the oldest post-war business school in Asia. This set me thinking about the MBA (Master of Business Administration) in the wake of the financial crisis.

A thirtysomething asks: “Don’t we ever learn?” He’s referring to the Generation Y’s concern over negative perceptions about banks and bankers, following big bankruptcies in the early 2000s, and now exacerbated by the financial crisis.

We seem to be stuck in an evolving quagmire of intense rage against big business’ bloated profits and outlandish bonuses. To be blunt, there is loss of confidence in financial institutions – investment banks, credit rating agencies and regulators even, including business schools. Surely, MBAs have lost a bit of their lustre.

I’m angry because many people at the heart of the crisis – from Christopher Cox (former US Securities and Exchange Commission chairman) and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson (ex-Goldman Sachs chief) to former Merrill Lynch CEOs Stan O’Neal and John Thain, and Rick Wagoner, the ousted General Motors CEO – each carry a Harvard MBA. They should have known better.

To be fair, although some of the worst culprits had MBAs from other schools, lots of others didn’t (Bernard Madoff for one). It is easy to confuse correlation with causation.

I am angry because the teaching of ethics and values-based leadership was not taken seriously enough. Critics point to many MBAs being not well-equipped to make good judgements, and didn’t have enough good sense to take corporate social responsibility (CSR) to the next level.

I am angry because many MBAs have a dangerous overdose of quantitative models, with underexposure to management of systems-wide risks. MBAs are good at analysis, not always at managing.

Still, greedy appetites in a “corrupt” eco-system can overpower even the best management education. For comfort, CEOs (with MBAs) of Canada’s two largest banks did just fine. While Wall Street bankers had no qualms in gearing their borrowing at 34 to 1, Canadian institutions played it safe with 18 to 1. They are doing well, of course, while their US counterparts are on life support.

A little bit of history

The MBA started life in the 1900s (at HBS in 1908). The aim was to train professional managers to run large institutions (like Standard Oil and GM) so that they wouldn’t take undue advantage of markets and consumers. CSR was also strongly advocated. Giant enterprises need to be managed for the public’s good, not for short-term gains.

After World War II, the Ford and Carnegie Foundations supported serious reviews to modernise the MBA. It was a time of market liberalisation. Nobel-winning economist Milton Friedman and the Chicago School increasingly dominated business thinking. Their ideology glorifies markets as efficient and capable of regulating themselves, and all managers have to do is to maximise shareholder value.

Critics argue that this very thinking got us into so much trouble today. This is the point made by HBS professor R. Khurana in his 2007 book on the history of MBAs, From Higher Aims to Hired Hands, which concludes that business schools (B-schools) have veered from their original purpose of “training managers to rule in the name of society”.

This new preoccupation with quantitative methods and mathematical models, including the use of advanced analysis, unfortunately gave MBAs the illusion of being able to control financial risks. Moreover, their teaching was flawed by ignoring a good sense of ethics (“largely a waste of time” anyway) and imparting lots of moneymaking know-how.

I overheard this at MIT-Sloan last summer: “In physical science, three laws explain 99% of behaviour; in finance, 99 laws can explain at best only 3%.”

The trouble with rankings

As I see it, BSRs (B-school rankings) are part of the problem. Sure, market pressure from BSRs exert the needed competition to improve curricula and teaching. But undue attention to drive up BSRs can have unintended consequences: (i) higher starting pay means admitting the more mature; (ii) stress on higher paying sectors skewa curriculum to favour Wall Street; (iii) funds are misdirected towards coaching students to perform well at interviews so as to raise job offers; and (iv) the focus on professional education is undermined – instead, students ask: “How can I make the most money?”

Ratings target short performance drivers, and needlessly bias B-schools’ marketing efforts. Prof J.M. Podolny (Apple University and formerly of Harvard, Yale and Stanford) was emphatic: “I do object to the manner in which rankings have legitimised most business schools’ myopic focus on the short term.”

Management education adds value

When asked whether the MBA is still relevant, HBS professor Quinn Mills gives a quick and crisp response: “Yes and more than ever.” According to him, business has become more important as financial crises challenge political stability and economic welfare.

MBA training helps students better understand the ecosystem and master developments. The education has two elements – one is about business and economics and the other, management and leadership.

The first looks outside the firm to its context (customers, suppliers, regulators, markets), while the second looks inside the firm to its effectiveness, efficiency, planning and implementation. Both are important to the success of individuals in a leadership position.

Mills is convinced the problems in financial markets involve more than the business element. Problems arise in what financial firms are doing to others and to each other, not in how efficiently they are managed. Many say it’s all a leadership problem. If Wall Street firms were better led – less greedy and more responsible - these problems would not arise. Many major MBA programmes emphasise technicalities of finance – training people to work in banks, not to lead them. It is in financial engineering that problems have arisen.

Unfortunately, nations have yet to reform financial regulation. Sad to say, B-schools have not sufficiently revised curricula to reflect lessons from the crisis, though in individual courses and cases, there is much that is now up-to-date.

Financial engineering continues to be taught, but is also updated to reflect disasters that have occurred (complicated securitisation, credit default swaps and complex derivatives) so that similar errors might be avoided in future. Also, ethics courses have been strengthened in response to dramatic cases of fraud (Madoff, Stanford, etc). Hopefully, students are better prepared to meet the world as it now is.
Through it all, acceptances to MBA programmes are significantly up in 2009. In the end, this simply means more business as usual.

Too little core revamp

Nevertheless, there has been since a lot of soul searching, including at HBS. Prof Nabil El-Hage (HBS senior associate dean) has this update: “We concluded that teaching critical thinking skill is one area we must do better. Our students go on to be leaders; they need to know how to think and challenge the status quo in a clearly analytical fashion.”

He adds: “The other, perhaps more mundane, area is risk management. This is difficult to teach. It is not exciting, it is not fun, and it is not so much about leadership. But if businesses focus strictly on the upside and lose sight of inherent risks, then crises are bound to recur. So, we are thinking long and hard about how to deal with this.”

In the final analysis, I believe real change will come through punishment by the one factor B-schools understand best: the market.

A promise to be ethical

The original sin of B-schools has been that there has been no real focus on business ethics and CSR. In the post-Madoff era, this is now urgent. But quality teaching is a problem since these “were kind of shunted in” after the early 2000s scandals, wrote P.D. Broughton, in his tell-all book about his years at HBS, Ahead of the Curve. Khurana confirms ethics was brought in like “academic theatrics” and have been since “quietly abandoned or marginalised”.

But students are not happy. Last summer, I attended Harvard’s Commencement, when new HBS graduates took on the MBA Oath, saying essentially greed is not good. This is a voluntary student-led living pledge to “act with utmost integrity and in an ethical manner” and to guard against “behaviour that advances my own narrow ambitions but harms the enterprise and society it serves”.

This is not unlike that of Columbia: “I adhere to principles of truth, integrity and respect. I will not cheat, steal or tolerate those who do.”

What’s being done appears serious, mirroring the Hippocratic Oath of doctors “not to do wrong” or the US lawyers’ pledge to “uphold law and constitution.” When I was at Harvard for the Commencement, 200 (grading class of 800) had already signed up.

This movement has been contagious. Diana Robertson of Wharton doesn’t think it will just fade. “It’s coming from students; we’ve not seen such surge of activism since the ‘60s.” For Khurana, it is now timely to transform business management into a true profession. This will involve licensing and an oversight body to police members. But he is not optimistic this will happen. It’s still very much work-in-progress.

Mills doesn’t see how business can really gain. The management/leadership element of MBA, he says, is too much an art for it to be professionalised. The finance side is already governed by a quasi-professional standard – the fiduciary responsibility rule (a financial advisor is legally bound to put clients’ interests above all). In practice, this rule is already not much honoured by financial advisors, money managers and courts. Mills sees little reason why new professional rules will perform better. He has a point.

How best to regain trust

We may not feel it as much in Asia. But even on Wall Street, there is resentment building up on the way MBAs are educated. The world has changed. B-schools have yet to change with it. To reduce distrust, MBAs need to show they value what society values.

As I see it, what is not taken seriously enough are the “soft” disciplines (leadership, values and ethics) and greater attention to detail (big picture education is not good enough). Leadership responsibilities need to be brought to the forefront – not just the rewards.

There are no quick fixes. Podolmy pointed to five possible ways: (a) foster greater complementary – integrate the mix of disciplines, linking analytics to values; (b) appoint team teaching – ensure “hard” and “soft” disciplines are jointly taught, giving a holistic understanding of problems and solutions; (c) incentivise qualitative research – cultivate a more eclectic approach, encouraging faculty to better weave “soft” disciplines into the main fabric of education; (d) stop competing on rankings – regain professional focus and downplay money as the end-all of business; and (e) withdraw the degree – oaths work when behaviour is monitored and credentials withdrawn on violations.

I think these warrant serious consideration. They are difficult to accept and hard to implement. Once upon a time, kings engaged jesters to bring them down to earth. Maybe, it’s now timely for B-schools to do likewise by encouraging faculty and students to prick bubbles, expose management fads, and even rough up “hero” managers. Yes, in a sense, to bite the hand that feeds them.

Realistically, I am convinced such changes are unlikely since it requires B-schools to re-invent themselves. Says Dean Light of HBS: “The crisis has not resulted in a systematic reinvention of curriculum, nor should it.” After all, as in every crisis, enrolment is up. So what’s your problem?

Source: Tan Sri Lin See-Yan - Former banker Lin is a Harvard-educated economist and a British Chartered Scientist who now spends time promoting public interest. Feedback is most welcome at
starbizweek@thestar.com.my

Quantum Computing Thrives on Chaos

 

Embracing chaos just might help physicists build a quantum brain. A new study shows that disorder can enhance the coupling between light and matter in quantum systems, a find that could eventually lead to fast, easy-to-build quantum computers.


Quantum computers promise superfast calculations that precisely simulate the natural world, but physicists have struggled to design the brains of such machines. Some researchers have focused on designing precisely engineered materials that can trap light to harness its quantum properties. To work, scientists have thought, the crystalline structure of these materials must be flawlessly ordered — a nearly impossible task.

The new study, published in the March 12 Science, suggests that anxious physicists should just relax. A group of researchers at the Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby have shown that randomly arranged materials can trap light just as well as ordered ones.

“We took a very interesting, different approach: relaxing all these ordered structures and using disorder” as a resource, says study coauthor Peter Lodahl. “Let it play with you instead of playing against you.”


One approach to quantum computing relies on entangling photons and atoms, or binding their quantum states so tightly that they can influence each other even across great distances. Once entangled, a photon can carry any information stored in the atom’s quantum state to other parts of the computer. To get that entangled state, physicists pin light in tiny cavities to increase the likelihood of quantum interaction with neighboring atoms.

Lodahl and his colleagues didn’t set out to trap light. They wanted to build a waveguide, a structure designed to send light in a particular direction, by drilling carefully spaced holes in a gallium arsenide crystal. Because the crystal bends light much more strongly than air does, light should have bounced off the holes and traveled down a channel that had been left clear of holes.

But in some cases, the light refused to move. It kept getting stuck inside the crystal.

“At first we were scratching our heads,” Lodahl says. “Then we realized it was related to imperfections in our structures.” If imperfect materials could trap light, Lodahl thought, then physicists could couple light and matter with much less frustration.

To see if disorder could help materials trap light, Lodahl and colleagues built a new waveguide, this time deliberately placing the holes at random intervals. They also embedded quantum dots, tiny semiconductors that can emit a single photon at a time, in the waveguide as a proxy for atoms that could become entangled with the photons.
After zapping the quantum dots with a laser to make them emit photons, the researchers found that 94 percent of the photons stayed close to their emitters, creating spots of trapped light in the crystal. That’s about as good as previous results using more precisely ordered materials. Intuitively, physicists expect light to scatter in the face of disorder, but in this case colliding light waves built each other up and collected in the material.

The quantum dots also emitted photons 15 times faster after a light spot formed around them.

“This is the essence of our discovery: We used localized modes not just to trap light but to enhance interaction between light and matter,” Lodahl says.

That’s the first mile marker on the road to entanglement, notes Diederik Wiersma, a physicist at the European Laboratory for Non-linear Spectroscopy in Florence, Italy. “It has not been achieved as quantum entanglement yet, but it’s the important step that everyone has to make to get there.”

The system produced several separate light traps at once. If the light traps can be entangled with each other, the system could someday lead to a quantum network in a randomly organized crystal.

Wiersma thinks of the potential product as a “quantum brain.” Like a human brain, a quantum brain is not a perfectly ordered structure, he says. “Nature doesn’t need a symmetric structure. It just needs your brain to be working.”

Images: 1) Artist’ impression of  light emission in a disordered photonic crystal waveguide./Soren Stobbe. 2) Light bouncing around a disordered crystal spontaneously arranged itself in bright spots, represented by the tall spikes./Luca Sapienza.
 

Source: Lisa Grossman, Science NewsRead More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/quantum-computing-thrives-on-chaos/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29#ixzz0hvNtVQv0

Computer algorithm, MRI used to tap memory

A computer algorithm, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), and neuroscientists working together have been able to identify what people are remembering by measuring blood flow levels, according to new research out of the University College London.

First, a group of 10 volunteers (average age 21) was shown three very short (as in 7 seconds) films, each of a woman on a city street doing a simple task, such as mailing a letter. Then, each of the volunteers was placed inside an fMRI scanner and asked to recall each film, first in a specific order, then at random.

One of the three short films showed this woman mailing a letter.

(Credit: Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging/UCL)

 

Using the scanner to measure changes in the brain's blood flow and a computer algorithm, researchers were able to identify which short film each person was remembering at a level the study's lead author describes in a news release to be "significantly above what would be expected by chance."

"This suggests that our memories are recorded in a regular pattern," says Martin Chadwick, who conducted the research at the University College London's Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging. The article appears in the journal Current Biology.

The researchers homed in on the medial temporal lobe, a region of the brain thought to be most involved in episodic memory. The computer algorithm performed best when analyzing the hippocampus, which the team has already studied.

Across all participants, the rear right, front left, and front right areas of the hippocampus appeared to be consistently involved. While it remains unclear exactly what role the front two regions play, the rear right was found in a previous study--identifying where a person was standing in a virtual reality simulation--to be where spatial information is recorded.

"Now that we are developing a clearer picture of how our memories are stored, we hope to examine how they are affected by time, the aging process and by brain injury," says Eleanor Maguire, who helmed the study as an extension of last year's work on spatial memory.

It's arguable whether the algorithm's accuracy is good enough to celebrate, since it identified the film being thought about correctly less than half of the time (40 to 45 percent, to be precise). But that is better than 33 percent, which is the rate at which a blind guess between three films would be accurate.

Probably the most exciting discovery is that the memory traces associated with each film were consistent throughout not only the study, but from one volunteer to the next, suggesting that memories may in fact have some sort of fixed, identifiable pattern.

  

Source: Elizabeth Armstrong Moore - a freelance journalist based in Portland, Ore. She has contributed to Wired magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, and public radio. Her semi-obscure hobbies include unicycling, slacklining, hula-hooping, scuba diving, billiards, Sudoku, Magic the Gathering, and classical piano. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET.

Cities Go Gaga for Google Fiber With Glowsticks! Flashmobs! Twistee Treats! An Icy Lake Jump!

Google's announcement that it was contemplating a move into the ISP business with an ultra-high speed fiber network has sparked a municipal cage match.

No one knows exactly how much Google plans to invest, but its reputation as cash giant alone has cities from Anchorage, Alaska, to Sarasota, Florida battling to become the search giant's new test market. Faster than you could say Google Fiber (though not faster than the company's proposed gigabit speeds) metros whipped up Facebook pages and took to Twitter to raise awareness and offer instruction on how to nominate their hometown. FastCompany.com combed through this rapidly growing list of cities and pulled together a few of the more creative efforts--some snarky, some tongue-in-cheek, all earnestly hoping that when the application process ends on March 26 and the dust clears in this social media-fueled Thunderdome, they'll claim Google Fiber's bountiful business. Many towns enter. One burgh leaves.

Columbia, Missouri

Columbia has all the advantages of a big city coupled with the access problems of small-town America: low-performance, high-cost broadband, and next to no fiber infrastructure, says Amberly Engert, a social media manager. So she created a Facebook page, and Ian Eyberg, a software developer started the Como Fiber Group to tout the potentially massive opportunity Google Fiber posed. Engert says that while no one in Columbia is jumping in a lake or renaming the town (read on), residents have submitted video kudos to the growing art scene and the "groovy culture" on the group's Web site. The effort really coalesced on Saturday when some 15,000 signs printed with Google's logo were distributed to the sell-out crowd at the nationally televised Missouri-Kansas men's basketball game.

Grand Rapids, Michigan

The Google Fiber for Grand Rapids steering committee points out that the typical Comcast & AT&T U-verse connection is about 6mbps--a far cry from Google's gigs. So they're planning a "Flash Mob" citywide rally on March 19 that is expected to include a "human fiber" chain of joined hands (Hands Across Grand Rapids?) to create what organizers hope will be a huge show of support. As it is, Grand Rapids currently has the distinction of collecting the most fans on its Facebook fan page (over 22,000 at last count) since it started on February 10. And, hey! Here's a local "television personality" making her case.

Greenville, South Carolina

Greenville's feeling lucky. The campaign to woo Google started by a group of twelve well-connected individuals and has spread like wildfire through the local tech community. Trey Pennington, an organizer, says this is not surprising given the community's mindset "dominated by commitment to collaborate." The group quickly produced a video playing off of Google's "Feeling Lucky" search theme and is planning a unique "community expression project"--Google on Main. Set to unfold the night of March 20th, citizens armed with glowsticks will gather in downtown Greenville--on Main Street -- to rave show their support for the coming of Google Fiber. Rumor has it the event will be filmed by helicopter.

Peoria, Illinois

The denizens of Peoria, Illinois, want Google to know that it hasn't yet taken a turn in the "geographic center of the universe." Not yet anyway. A special Web site, Google Plays in Peoria, features a video rife with slides of bucolic cityscapes and stirring music from Vangelis. Peoria announces that on March 26, Google "will have a once in a lifetime opportunity to play in Peoria." But that's not all. Photographs of the seven wonders of Peoria ensue, and once again the city pitches Google, this time for a chance to join the ranks of a larger-than-life bikini clad sculpture, a Twistee Treat, and others as the city's "eighth wonder." If all else fails, Peoria says to Google, "Do it for the children." Media coverage includes a story of ways Peoria schools could benefit from faster Internet access.

Topeka, Kansas

Jared Starkey, the president of LAMP Development, LLC, says the campaign started as Facebook group and spun out into a new group called "Think Big Topeka." Now over 14,000 volunteer members strong (with no dues, and therefore, no bank account), they are relying on donated advertising and promotional support to spread the word further. Most famously, Topeka's mayor issued a proclamation (on Google Docs, natch) that for the entire month of March, Topeka would be renamed Google, Kansas. Starkey would like to remind Google that the city served as the testbed for Pokemon in the U.S. back in 1998, so they are uniquely qualified to be Google's control group. And he says, theirs is the only city to make international headlines with their bid for Fiber.

Sarasota, Florida

Taking note of the gauntlets thrown by Topeka and Duluth, Sarasota renamed its City Island, Google Island, and produced a (rather hilarious) video juxtaposing the positives of the city nestled in the Sunshine State with the less-than-picturesque landscape of the Heartland, and the shoulder-high snow drifts and freezing temperature of Minnesota. 'Nuff said.

Duluth, Minnesota

But wait! Patrick Garmoe, public information officer of the Google Twin Ports Initiative laughs sheepishly as he explains Googlefest, an event that is one part rally, one part carnival and all parts enthusiasm for the promise of Google Fiber. In the midst of bands, choirs and other entertainment, "We'll be shooting a movie with real actors and a Hollywood director and live-streaming the event to impress Google," Garmoe says. The new initiative comes on the heels of Deluth mayor Don Ness's own stunts. In a spoof video proclamation that in honor of Google, all first born males would be henceforth named GoogleFiber and first born females would of course be Googlette. Also, he literally sunk to a new low in the brutal battle for business. He jumped into the freezing waters of Lake Superior. Hizzoner, perhaps you'll be deterred from further lunacy by these
extremely gnarly Google Image results for "frostbite."

BY Lydia DishmanToday

Related Stories: Evolution of a Facebook-Killer Google, Apple May Suffer Anti-Trust Action for Sharing Board Members Google I/O: The Next Android OS--Google Donut, Looks Tasty

Topics: Innovation, Video, Technology, Google Fiber, google, Topeka, Duluth, Sarasota, Greenville, Peoria, Grand Rapids, columbia, MO, Peoria, Google Inc., Topeka, Kansas Jayhawks (Basketball), Grand Rapids

How could lawsuit and criticism-distressed Google still boast of "doing no evil"?

Google, which has always striven towards a goal of "doing no evil" has recently been involved in successive lawsuits. Three of Google's executives were sentenced to 6 months in jail in Italy on February 24 for the criminal invasion of privacy.

Meanwhile, the European Commission has decided to launch anti-monopoly investigations into Google’s search engine and advertising search services. The reporter learned from Microsoft's official blog, that following Google's rapid expansion, an increasing number of small and large companies have begun filing lawsuits against Google. The lawsuits are related to every segment of the market that Google is involved in.

Some lawsuits reveal the tough stance taken by Google in relevant markets and some lawsuits reflect secrets behind Google's business operations. Other lawsuits are related to antitrust issues. What Google products have suffered from lawsuits? Why did these products merit lawsuits?

How could lawsuit and criticism-distressed Google still boast of "doing no evil"

"Offensive" product No. 1: Photos and videos 

Groups offended: Parents and Internet regulators of various countries
 
Three Google executives in Italy were prosecuted after Google released a video on youtube.com, which is owned by Google, in which a disabled child was bullied – an autistic child was hit and insulted by 4 classmates on their school's campus. Google claimed in court that it just provided an Internet platform and assumes no obligation to check the content. Google has used similar excuses after being required to check pornography-related content in China.

It is worth noting that when Google claims its innocence, it is repeating the same tactic, hoping to turn a commercial criminal case into a political event. It has even urged U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to impose pressure on Italy. This tends to make people think of the "Google's possible exit from China" event that has yet to be settled.

Li Siyi, deputy director of the Institute of Journalism and Media under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), said that every country around the world has an information censorship system, particularly the censorship of content relating to terrorism and child pornography. Google is skilled at using the media to protect itself, but all the countries will not compromise when it come to the cases involved with such content. Even the U.S., where Google is headquartered, does not permit the free transmission of certain information in light of security. Such information includes information on national security, territory integrity and religious harmony as well as ill information that may hurt children's physical and mental health.

Analysts believe that this is the first case that a video sharing service has been convicted by a court because of a video posted by users. The conviction by the Italian court has a far-reaching impact on the development of the Internet industry, because it not only will likely change the business model of mainstream video sharing websites, but may even also change the industry’s understanding of the Internet.

"Offensive" product No. 2: news, videos and maps 

Groups offended: the media, websites of various kinds and antitrust authorities
 
Google's products, such as news, videos and maps are all information service products, and the information is gleaned from media and websites around the world. These search service products offered by Google are greatly welcomed by users. However, Google's money-making strategy of "obtaining advertisement resources by using information free of charge" has led to complaints and alertness among information suppliers.


Newspapers and magazines in Germany have blamed Google, saying that Google stole their readers by using unfair competitive methods. German map websites claimed that Google has destroyed their rural markets. The American Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) has removed its videos from Google's YouTube website. The American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has also required Google to take some videos of the Academy Award ceremony off its YouTube website… Obviously, we can see that these information suppliers are no longer willing to allow Google a free ride.

The increasing influence of Google also offended some antitrust authorities. These authorities worry that Google is abusing its dominant position on the Internet. What Google is doing is that it always uses the headline news or the brief descriptions of the news published on other news websites unless these websites clearly state the news cannot be re-published. In addition, an Internet engineer disclosed that Google might use filtering software to eliminate some websites from relevant search results, and that would make the websites suffer commercial losses.

"Offensive" product No. 3: Gmail's Buzz 

Groups offended: common users
 
On February 11, Iran Telecoms announced that Iran would permanently suspend Google's Gmail service and launch a national e-mail service. On the same day, Google launched its Buzz service. As soon as Buzz, a service which is quite similar to the micro-blogging website Twitter, was launched, it quickly began to receive criticism. The reasons are 3 automatic settings. First, Google automatically registers its Gmail users for the Buzz service. In other words, Gmail users already have this service before they apply for it or choose to use it. Second, Buzz automatically creates a Buzz friend list for a user using names in the user's Gmail contacts list. Third, Buzz automatically sends the latest contents on a user's Buzz micro-blog to the e-mail boxes of the user's Gmail friends. All of these settings make it possible that users' private information could possibly be leaked. On February 16, the U.S. Electronic Privacy Information Centre announced that the Buzz service had violated Federal Consumer Protection Laws.

After using Buzz, a woman angrily wrote that she used Gmail to communicate mostly with her mother and boyfriend, but the person who was next to them was her ex-husband. Google's Buzz automatically set that they (including her ex-husband) could see some of her private information, but only she and her boyfriend had the right to read the information.

"It does not matter whether users are active on Buzz. Many claim that Google's real purpose is to learn what you are chatting about or watching, to observe the messages you write so that they will have all of your things at their fingertips. After doing so, Google can do a lot, including pushing advertising and personalized searches," said a technologist from a dot-com company.

"Google keeps and analyzes all users' search records, IP addresses, and preferences. Maybe some rabid technology admirers think that Google stores the information just to provide more personalized and considerate service, but I care more about the security of personal information," said Zhang Lei, a college student.

"Offensive" product No. 4: digital library 

The offended: writers and publishers
 
Google Digital Library has enraged a large number of writers and publishers in many countries.

Google unilaterally quit negotiations with the Chinese Written Works Copyright Society January 12, causing a dilemma for both sides. It was also in big trouble in the U.S., because 15 Indian writers and publishers, as well as 2 copyright protection organizations, have filed lawsuits collectively in a U.S. court against Google's settlement agreement on digital books. Before the Indians brought in their objections, a large number of writers, publishers and other organizations from many countries across the world had already submitted their documents to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against the revised settlement agreement, and the court decided to indefinitely postpone a decision on whether to allow Google to ultimately carry out the digital library project.


Furthermore, Google Digital Library Project has raised wide concerns over cultural security in many countries that would prefer to build their own digital libraries. For example, after the launch of European Digital Library, Japan and France followed to build national digital library. Germany also officially launched the German Digital Library Project, and the digital library, involving more than 30,000 libraries and museums, is expected to be put into use this year.

Google's settlement agreement, which allows the company to scan and make available millions of books online and induce copyright owners to accept the agreement via a "waiver of copyright" clause, is a serious violation of international copyright protection laws. "It is absurd, unconscionable, and illegal that anyone can copy what they want from copyrighted works without permission, and then ask the copyright owner to give up the right, but that is exactly what the autocratic Google has been doing so far," writers said.

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